Author: editors

In front of Roppongi Hills, this car company was advertising their new product.  You wonder, if cars are not selling so well in Japan, how many people would really want to buy a car like this?

Maybe rather than advertising in front of an entrance to a station, it may be better to promote the product in a CEO type magazine or with chauffeur associations or something more targeted.

For advertizing, targeted and effective are two words that come to mind.

  
Petit or Grande?  Well we suppose it’s a Grandly Petit apartment in Akihabara, Tokyo. 

Here’s a list of books recently recommended.  This list is from David Cancel

Sorted by books I’ve re-read the most:

The Hard Thing About Hard Things?—?The only “real” business book. This book really captures what it is like leading a startup.

Made in America?—?The story of how Sam Walton created Wal-Mart and became the richest man in the world. I have stolen many concepts from this book including the concept of Servant Leadership. Read 3x.

Seeking Wisdom?—?I can’t remember how I first found this book years ago but it’s been on my nightstand ever since. I continuously read this book finding new gems each time.

Zingerman’s Guide to Giving Great Service?—?If you care about creating a great customer experience read this book.

Managing Oneself?—?buy this tiny book by Peter Drucker and re-read it every 5 years.

Behind the Cloud?—?The story of Salesforce from it’s founder & CEO, Marc Benioff.

Let My People Go Surfing?—?The story behind the founding of Patagonia and more importantly how to build a company with strong values.

Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind?—?This and Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion are the best books on Marketing. These books will teach you why you buy the things you do.

Meditations?—?So deep you need to re-read this book every few years.

Practicing The Power of Now

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion

Entreleadership

Setting the Table

The Big Moo

Re-Imagine!?—?Too many great Tom Peters books, start with this one.

High Output Management?—?The book that started the recent OKR trend used by Google and many other companies to manage priorities.

Predictable Revenue?—?How to run a sales team from an early Salesforce.com sales leader.

This list was originally posted here.

All of us in business are pretty fed up with incompetent politicians in the US government.  In business we have to learn to work with each other, you wonder why the Democrats can’t figure out how to work with the Republicans and vice-versa?

Great post by Rupert Murdoch in the Wall Street Journal on what America has been, and should be, all about.

We are all often struck by the exceptional qualities of America and by the exceptional and selfless influence America has exercised on the world. We can idly and mildly joke, but if it were not for U.S. intervention in the Pacific, we Australians would not speak with our distinctive drawl, but in the rather polite verb endings of Japanese. So let us not be PC, but frank: There is no way that Australia alone could have defended itself during the Second World War, heroic as Australian troops were.

In the 1950s, America saved the now prospering South Korea from the barbarity of Kim Il Sung. And that sacrifice and intervention provided the buffer that Japan needed to rise from the postwar ashes to be a great economy and a reliable ally. One country, North Korea, is a heartless, ruthless personality cult that runs at the expense of its people, and the other country, South Korea, is a thriving democracy that has created companies that have improved lives around the world.

In the 1960s and 1970s, America intervened in Vietnam, an intervention that has been caricatured and distorted in the days since. The left seemed to be happy for the incarceration of millions, whether in Vietnam under Ho or in China under Mao. Why agonize over inhumanity when you could blithely celebrate yourself?

And in the 1980s, thanks to Ronald Reagan, America stood firm against the Soviet Union, and that very resolve led to reform. It led to one Germany, not two. It allowed the Polish and the Hungarians and the Czechs and Slovaks to be themselves, not political proxies. It recast Europe and emancipated millions. And yet the left still cannot find the words to recognize Ronald Reagan. For the rest of the world, he changed it.

In that same era, the U.S. provided a stable background for the rise of China, which went from the impoverishment of mindless ideology to the magic of market forces, allowing hundreds of millions of people to escape from poverty through their own efforts.

That emancipation of the most populous nation on earth is a modern miracle. Yet this fundamental, irrefutable truth must be denied by those who despise America and detest economic freedom. The Chinese understand, and they appreciate the undoubted efficacy of American influence. Yet the soft left cannot countenance that remarkable human success.

America’s contributions to life itself are many and meaningful, from the mass production of antibiotics, to the banishing of polio, the treatment of HIV, and the wonder of gene therapy and all that means for every disease. Markets produce a messy magic. It is the magic of our collective creativity.

Let us examine the five-letter word “frack.” Not hundreds of millions, but billions of people will benefit from fracking and the cheaper energy it provides. And yet a comfortable elite wants to deny their fellow humans the benefits of this technology. Fracking has become a litmus test of principle. Those governments that forbid fracking are the flat-earth fraternity—yes, including New York state.

Above is an excerpt, but you can get the whole article here.